Association between allergic rhinitis and despair, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts in Korean adolescents: a nationally representative study of one million adolescents

OBJECTIVE: There is a lack of studies establishing the association between al-lergic rhinitis (AR) and despair, suicidal thinking, and suicide attempts in adolescents and children at a population level. This study aimed to investi-gate whether there are associations between al-lergic rhinitis and despair, suicidal thinking, and suicide attempts. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study uti-lized data from middle through high school ado-lescents from 2005-2021 who enrolled in the Korea Youth Risk Behavior Web-based Survey (KYRBS; 1,067,169). We assessed despair, suicidal think-ing, and suicide attempts in the context of both non-atopic and atopic AR. Multivariable analysis was used to determine the association of variables. RESULTS: The prevalence of allergic rhinitis was 28.0%. 1,067,169 enrolled participants were included in the final analysis. There were 299,468 individuals with allergic rhinitis and 767,701 with-out. In the context of AR, adolescents were more likely to have despair [adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 1.16; 95% CI, 1.15-1.17], suicidal thoughts (aOR, 1.12; 95% CI, 1.11-1.13 for model 2), and suicide attempts (aOR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.10-1.15 for mod-el 2). Individuals with atopic AR were more like-ly in almost all measures to have despair, suicid-al thinking, and suicide attempts than individu-als with non-atopic AR. Females with AR were more likely to have suicide attempts and mid-dle school students were more likely to have de-spair, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study war-rant future studies investigating why AR is so closely associated with despair, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts, with the goal of establish-ing suicide prevention strategies as well as im-proving overall mental health for adolescents.